George Clooney Opens Up About Near-Fatal Motorcycle Crash

George Clooney lived to tell the tale of a terrifying 2018 motorcycle crash that could’ve easily been fatal. 

The actor, riding a scooter on the Italian island of Sardinia , crashed head-on into a car that made a wrong turn into his lane. 

“I hit him at 70 miles per hour, so it was bad,” Clooney said in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter .

“I split my helmet in half. It knocked me out of my shoes. I was hit hard. I was just waiting for the switch to turn off because I broke his windshield with my head.”  

Video shows that the impact flung Clooney high into the air :

Amazingly, Clooney escaped serious injury. He said the crash left him with slight pain in his pelvis and bruises to a leg and an arm, according to the local outlet La Nuova.  

Clooney told The Hollywood Reporter that he thought at the time his chances of surviving were slim. 

“I thought, ‘OK, well, that’s my neck.’ If you get nine lives, I got all of them used up at once — so I can let go of motorcycle riding for a while,” the actor quipped.

He joked that he learned he “cannot fly.” He said he and producer Grant Heslov, who was riding a scooter with Clooney at the time, were swearing off motorcycles. 

“It got both Grant and me, after 40 years of riding together, off of motorcycles for good. I had to quit. It was bad,” he said. 

In 2007, Clooney and then-girlfriend Sarah Larson were injured in a motorcycle crash with a car in New Jersey. Clooney suffered a hairline rib fracture  and Larson broke her foot.